Imaginarium of Us

Burn the Curtain & Sara Downham-Lotto – Spring-Autumn 2021

Community cohesion.

‘Celebrating the extraordinary and the everyday, the places we love, and our hopes and dreams’. Burn the Curtain

During the spring, summer and autumn of 2021, the Devon-based interactive promenade theatre company, Burn the Curtain, came together with local artists to deliver a programme of participatory workshops and events for local communities in parks across Exeter. Arts Lab was part of the team.

Back in the wettest May on record, Burn the Curtain – the Devon-based Interactive Promenade Theatre Company – asked the local community to don their wellies and join (them) on springtime creative Wondrous Ramblings followed by participatory celebrations from June to September of the work they and (invited) artists created along the way – The Sum of Our Imaginings.

During the final Imaginarium of Us performances, the community met ethereal ‘Curiositors’ who guided them through participatory exhibits, strange machines, ghostly voices and bizarre objects on a journey through a strange yet familiar world.

Working with a group of local artists, including Arts Lab’s Sara Downham-Lotto, Burn the Curtain’s community project The Imaginarium of Us, was made possible by public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England and Exeter Canal and Quay Trust.

Feedback from Sara’s collaborative painting workshops:

May 2020

‘It was the best day ever. I had no idea what I was coming to, but it was very special. It helped me to connect with nature – looking out for things. I loved the idea you had to really look for things… It helped me connect with my daughter.’

‘This was so good for our wellbeing. It would be wonderful if we could offer it as part of Social Prescribing. It was also really good to do something like this as a one off.’

‘Creative, Engaging, Imaginative.’

‘Adventurous discovery, igniting, and about letting loose … form of release.’

Photography: Theo Moyle